Mad Max Found!
Mad Max found!
UP FRONT
David Edwards
CALL OFF THE BLOODHOUNDS, CANCEL the all-points bulletins, send the psychics packing. Mad Max, our long-lost 1986 project Yamaha, has been located.
A couple of issues back, we tried to track down the wayward V-Max, subject of our “Takin’ it to the 9s” retrospective from March of’87. With nothing more than intake and exhaust mods, struts, a slick and a wheelie bar, Mr. Max had busted out a 9.74-second dragstrip pass at 135.74 mph, ridden by quarter-mile maestro Jay Gleason. Not bad, we said then, for a 550-pound streetbike “that’s never had its valve covers off, and with its tank half-full of pump gas!”
But where did the bike go after we were done with it? No one seemed to know.
Well, for the past 12 years and 60,000 miles it’s been in the good care of Leonard Ochs. Forty-seven at the time of purchase, Ochs was a semiretired mechanical engineer who had sailed his 37-foot yawl to the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands. He also owned a stock 1985 V-Max, which he shipped to the Caribbean, “where we became the terror of the impromptu eighthmile dragstrip at the local dump,” he says.
Upon his return to the U.S. in ’89, Ochs, well plugged into the V-Max grapevine, discovered that Sandy Kosman had the “Nines” bike at his shop in San Francisco. Kosman Specialties did much of the prep work on the Yamaha for our article and bought the bike from Yamaha after the story ran. Sandy had already sold the bike once, but it was returned after just 350 miles, the shaken owner declaring, “This bleeping thing is too fast for the street!”
Selling his stocker to pay for Mad Max, Ochs celebrated the acquisition with a 3600-mile flog from Frisco to the Sturgis Rally in South Dakota.
“I was totally head-over-heels about the bike,” he says. “Sure, it hurt the butt and lower back, but real love is supposed to hurt occasionally; besides, the hurt was over-compensated just by twisting the throttle at 90 mph to loft the front wheel while being slammed into the seatback! God, I love the beast.”
That love included taking the bike north to Alaska for a couple of years-or as Ochs calls it, his time of “fighting traction problems.”
The pair migrated back to California, taking up residence in Mendocino County, north of San Fran. On a particular stretch of backroad that he prefers to keep anonymous, if you were passed by a maroon blur with a raucous exhaust note, that was probably Ochs.
“I read an awful lot about how the VMax is only a straight-line beast. I am now in a position to totally refute that particular horseshit,” he boasts. “I own 68 miles of this road-be you on your Gixxer or in your Ferrari, you will be toast.”
His handling secret? Soft-compound tires, Koni shocks, Progressive fork springs, heavier oil, sliders from a latemodel Max and, he says, “a triple-X jockstrap.” This combo, Ochs goes on with maybe more than a little hyperbole, “is guaranteed to give you one of the most orgasmic rides of your sweet life-I must admit, though, it does make life hard on the knees of your Levis!”
Hard on the local wildlife, too. Four years ago during a night ride, Ochs & Max centerpunched a “tall rodent” (otherwise known as a deer) at speed.
“All I had time to do was straighten out the bike, brace my arms and aim for what I assumed was its weak spot right behind the shoulders and BLAM! A moment later I remember thinking, Tf I’m dead, this must be Valhalla because I’m still riding my bike.’”
Damage assessment showed slightly bent fork tubes, a weepy radiator and a missing front fender. The deer faired considerably less well, cleaved clean in two. “There was a lot of green stuff on the left rear of the bike (vegetation in various stages of digestion?) and a lot of brown stuff (probably needs no explanation) on the right,” he says.
About a year later, Ochs incurred more downtime. “A meltdown of the right rear piston on Interstate 5 during a discussion with a GSX-R concerning which of us had the higher top end,” he says. The malfunction was traced to a leaky manifold, and Ochs decided maybe it was time for a rebuild. All four pistons (stock) were replaced, as were the rings and valves (also stock, which should settle arguments among Max’ers that maybe the Cycle World project bike was a cheater). The prototype Kerker exhaust was replicated in stainless-steel. “The mild steel was getting fairly thin by this time,” he says.
Some 6000 miles post-rebuild, the bike is as nasty as ever. “It’s still the thundering beast it’s always been,” Ochs enthuses. “Believe it or not, I have never been beat on the street-the only bike that came close was a tricked-out R1 with what looked like a midget piloting it. I’ve ridden this bike almost daily, and I’m as thrilled and awed by its brute power as the first time I wicked it on and melted the rear Metzeler.”
But Ochs is thinking about selling his mighty Max. Now 59, and with past professions that include boat captain, navigator, shipyard manager, carpenter, bartender, diesel mechanic, rockhound, jeweler and for the past three years, owner of a business that markets jade-slab tables, he’s thinking about retirement. Spain’s Costa Brava is calling him.
“About eight years ago, I air-shipped a Harley there and spent six glorious weeks investigating the beaches and mountains between Alicante and Barcelona,” he says. “Just haven’t been able to forget the gracious people and stress-free environment. Also, the riding was incredible-I especially liked the way the traffic cops tore up my speeding tickets as long as I remembered to say lo siento (I’m sorry). Is that heaven or what?”
Not wanting to push the policía too far with a bellowing V-Four, though, Ochs may put the Yamaha on the block. “Any interest in what has become an icon of the V-Max subculture?” he asks rhetorically.
Hmmm. Wonder if I can hide it in the magazine’s Travel & Entertainment budget? Technically, Mad Max is both.O
